Accessibility

In order to make the MSA annual conference more accessible, I would like to urge you to ask each of your panelists to bring 3 extra printed copies of his/her paper to the panel or roundtable. I would appreciate it if you would make these copies available to audience members who need them to follow the talks at your session. The MSA board will be exploring a policy or set of session guidelines for future conferences, but for this year, I hope you will be able to help make the conference more accessible by contacting your panelists in advance and asking for their cooperation.

Thank you, and I look forward to seeing all of you in Buffalo in a few weeks!

Mark Morrisson

Conference Overview

"Structures of Innovation," which will be held at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in downtown Buffalo, encourages the exploration of modernist innovation in literature, film, music, architecture, technology, visual and performing arts, and their intersections with race, gender, industry, advertising, science, and law.
An international border city, Buffalo, New York is the site of the grain elevators celebrated by Le Corbusier, buildings designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Sullivan, and a Frederick Law Olmsted park system as well as of the world's first dedicated movie theater and the legendary Buffalo Colored Musician's Club, and it has been home to many important poets and fiction writers and a center for visual and performing arts. We hope this site will encourage wide-ranging interdisciplinary and transnational approaches to the conference theme.

The organizers welcome panel, seminar, and roundtable proposals on any topic; particular preference will be given to proposals that explore modernist innovation, but the primary criterion for selection will be the quality of the proposal, not its link to the conference theme.

About the MSA

Founded in 1999, the Modernist Studies Association is devoted to the study of the arts in their social, political, cultural, and intellectual contexts from the late nineteenth through the twentieth century. Through its annual conferences and journal, Modernism/modernity, the organization seeks to develop an international and interdisciplinary forum for exchange among scholars in this revitalized and rapidly expanding field. The 2011 conference is hosted by the University at Buffalo, SUNY with generous financial support provided various departments and faculties.

Support

MSA XIII, “Structures of Innovation,” is hosted by University at Buffalo SUNY with generous financial support provided by, among others, the University at Buffalo’s departments of English, Comparative Literature, Romance Languages and Literatures, Visual Studies, Humanities Institute, Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy, the David Gray Chair for Poetry, the Melodia Jones Chair, and by Johns Hopkins University Press and Routledge.